Christian  Mysticism 

by 
Harry  LeRoy  Haywood 


MOV  21  1934 


BV    SOSr.HSS    1917 
^ivis    Haywood,    H.    L.    1886-1956. 

Christian  mysticism  and 
Secti       other  essays 

PI  "5^^ 


Christian  Mysticism 

and 

Other  Essays 


HARRY  LeROY  HAYWOOD 


NOV  21  1934   ,-. 


V 


Christian   Mysticism 

and 

Other  Essays 


BY 


HARRY  LeROY  HAYWOOD 


BOSTON  and  CHICAGO 

THE  MURRAY  PRESS 
1917 


CONTENTS 

Foreword 9 

Christian  Mysticism 11 

The  Secret  Place  of  the  Most  High    ...  29 

The  Invisible  World 41 


DeMcatton 

It  is  fitting  that  this,  my  first  book,  should 
be  dedicated  to  my  first  friend, 
MY   MOTHER 
Alice  Lauretta  Haywood. 


AUTHOR'S  FOREWORD 

The  essay  which  gives  its  title  to  this  Httle  book 
was  prepared  as  a  paper  to  be  read  before  the  Minis- 
terial Association  of  my  home  city.  The  other  two 
studies  have  been  adapted  from  sermons  preached 
to  my  people  in  the  course  of  my  regular  ministry. 
There  is  no  need  to  tell  the  observing  reader  that 
none  of  these  pages  were  written  with  any  thought 
that  they  might  ever  appear  in  the  semi-permanent 
form  in  which  he  here  finds  them.  Their  appearance 
is  wholly  due  to  the  efforts  of  Mr.  Harold  Marshall, 
the  presiding  genius  of  the  Murray  Press,  a  brother 
for  whom  I  feel  very  much  admiration  and  love;  he 
insisted  on  gathering  my  fugitive  pages  into  a  volume 
at  a  tim.e  when  the  pressure  of  work  miade  it  impossible 
to  recast  them  in  more  appropriate  form.  My  sole 
justification  for  giving  so  im.perfect  a  little  book  to 
the  public  is  the  hope  that  it  may  lead  some  kindred 
spirit  to  seek  a  closer  walk  with  that  little  band  of 
God-intoxicated  spirits  who  hold  in  their  hands  to- 
day, as  ever  before,  the  destinies  of  religion. 

The  discerning  reader  will  have  found  that  my 
study  of  'The  Secret  Place  of  the  Most  High"  was 
written  under  the  imimediate  inspiration  of  Dr.  James 
Martineau's  masterly  serm^ons  on  'The  Sphere  of 
Silence."  There  is  no  need  that  at  this  late  day  any 
one  should  undertake  to  pay  a  tribute  to  that  tran- 
scendent pulpit  genius  whom  Gladstone  described  as 


10  FOREWORD 

"the  greatest  English  thinker  of  his  generation," 
nevertheless  I  desire  that  this  present  little  book  shall 
be  accepted  as  an  offering  to  his  holy  memory. 

I  am  at  a  loss  to  understand  now  why  I  did  not 
include  among  the  books  recommended  on  Mysticism 
the  incomparable  volumes  written  by  my  friend  and 
colleague,  Dr.  Joseph  Fort  Newton.  His  seven 
volumes  of  sermons,  his  little  study  on  "What  the 
Saints  Have  to  Teach  Us,"  his  "Wesley  and  Wool- 
man,"  and,  above  all,  his  "Eternal  Christ,"  are  among 
the  most  beautiful  and  most  richly  rewarding  utter- 
ances that  I  have  ever  read. 

Waterloo,  Iowa,  October  1,  1917. 


CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

Let  me  confess  at  the  very  outset  my  absolute 
inability  to  define  mysticism.  Dean  Inge  appends 
twenty-six  various  definitions  to  his  carefully  wTitten 
work  on  the  subject;  he  might  have  made  it  two  hun- 
dred and  sixty.  It  is  as  impossible  to  capture  so 
vast,  so  m^anifold,  so  elusive,  a  matter  inside  the 
narrow  lasso  of  a  definition  as  to  wrap  a  string  of 
words  around  any  other  great  reality,  such  as  beauty, 
love,  religion,  or  even  life  itself.  But  if  definition  is 
impossible,  perhaps  I  can  so  describe  mysticism  as 
to  permit  it  to  tell  its  own  story. 

It  may  help  us  toward  this  end  if  we  will  clear 
away  from  our  minds  one  of  the  m.ost  popular  mis- 
understandings of  the  whole  subject,  namely,  that 
mysticism  is  some  form  of,  or  is  closely  allied  to, 
occultism.  Even  so  careful  a  student  as  Emerson 
made  this  mistake,  as  is  witnessed  by  the  fact  that  he 
uses  Swedenborg  as  his  representative  of  mysticism  in 
his  volum.e  on  Representative  Men.  Swedenborg 
was  a  psychic,  or  an  occultist,  or  whatever  else  you 
m„ay  choose  to  call  him,  but  mystic  he  was  not, 
unless  all  who  have  hitherto  written  on  that  subject 
have  gone  far  astray.  Man  has  always  desired  to 
understand  the  natural  forces  playing  about  him  and 
to  learn  to  control  them  for  his  own  purposes.  In  the 
days  before  science  it  was  natural  that  the  minds  of 
men  should  hit  upon  the  idea  of  a  supernatural  control 


12  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

of  nature;  this  belief  in  a  supernatural  control  of  the 
forces  about  us  is  what  we  call  occultism.  But 
occultism  was  not  the  precursor  of  mysticism,  but  of 
science,  strange  as  that  statement  may  now  sound 
in  our  ears.  Yet  that  is  the  fact,  nevertheless,  for  it 
was  astrology  which  engendered  astronomy,  and  it  was 
from  alchemy  that  chemistry  and  physics  were  bom. 
Mysticism  had  other  forbears  and  to-day  has  other 
connections.  If  one  is  desirous  of  learning  what  an 
impassable  gulf  there  is  between  the  two  let  him  read 
such  present  day  journals  as  the  Channel  or  the  Occult 
Review,  or,  better  still,  let  him  read  one  of  the  greatest 
of  al'  books  every  written  on  the  subject,  "The  H  story 
of  Magic,"  by  Eliphas  Levi.  The  aim  of  occultism 
is  power;  the  aim  of  mysticism  is  character.  One  is 
intellectual,  the  other  eth  cal.  The  purpose  of  the 
occultist  is  the  gaining  of  control  over  nature  that 
he  may  have  his  way  with  her;  the  purpose  of  the 
mystic  is  to  know  God  and  to  conform  his  own  h'oman 
will  to  the  divine  will,  in  which  alone,  as  Dante  said, 
there  is  our  peace.  If  any  two  things  differ  more  in 
their  ultimate  aims  and  methods  I  can  not  think 
what  they  are! 

Mysticism  is,  then,  a  type  of  religion.  I  say  "a'' 
type,  because,  as  I  understand  it,  there  are  at  least 
two  fundamentally  different  forms  of  re  igion.  Pro- 
fessor Sabafer  has  called  them  religions  of  authority 
and  religions  of  the  spirit.  For  our  purposes  to-day 
I  shall  prefer  to  call  them  religions  that  are  mediated 
and  religions  that  are  immediate.  My  phraseology 
is  not  so  easily  understood  at  first,  but  is  better  for 
the  task  in  hand. 


CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM  13 

By  a  mediated  religion  I  understand  that  which 
holds  that  we  can  know  God  only  at  second  hand, 
through  the  help  of  creeds,  or  sacraments,  or  church 
ordinances,  or  priests.  Between  God  and  man  there 
is  a  great  gulf  fixed  and  the  soul  can  not  cross 
this  gulf  except  by  the  bridges  which  som.e  form  of 
authority  has  made  for  it.  In  modem  times  Cardinal 
Newman  is  an  outstanding  example  of  such  a  posi- 
tion. 

Among  influential  religious  teachers  of  our  day 
none  other  has  so  eloquently  or  persistently  held  that 
man  in  himself  is  incapable  of  knowing  God.  New- 
m_an's  own  life,  as  we  shall  see  later,  was  built  on  an 
experience  which  contradicts  this,  nevertheless  the 
weight  of  his  great  influence  has  been  on  the  side  of  a 
m.ediated  religion.  In  past  times  I  suppose  it  is 
Scholasticism  that  offers  us  the  best  view  of  ths  type 
of  religion  working  on  a  large  scale.  So  suspicious 
were  the  Scholastics  of  anything  even  faintly  tinged 
with  a  first  hand  attempt  to  find  God  that  at  the  close 
of  the  twe  fth  century  church  authorities  excom- 
municated, burned  and  otherwise  made  way  with  the 
fol  owers  of  Amalrich,  because  that  leader  had  chosen 
as  his  m^otto  ''that  each  of  us  is  a  me  nber  of  Christ." 
It  seems  that  these  Atlases  of  the  traditional  faith  had 
themselves  entire  y  overlooked  the  Biblical  doctrine  of 
the  Ho-y  Spirit,  but  then  that  is  what  every  man  must 
do  who  erects  his  faith  on  the  platform  of  external 
authority,  be  it  in  another  man,  in  an  institution,  or 
in  a  book. 

Wherever  in  history  we  see  this  mediated  form  of 
faith  at  work  we  find  contrasted  with  it  that  which  I 


14  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

have  called  immediate  religion.  Emerson  gives  a 
true,  if  somewhat  exaggerated,  description  of  this 
in  his  Divinity  School  address,  that  lecture  de- 
livered before  the  students  of  Divinity  College  at 
Cambridge,  and  which  Holmes  called  our  ''Declara- 
tion of  Intellectual  Independence."  I  link  together 
two  passages:  "Meantime,  the  doors  of  the  t  nple 
stand  open,  night  and  day,  before  every  man,  an  the 
oracles  of  this  truth  cease  never,  it  is  guarded  hy  one 
stem  condition;  namely:  it  is  an  intuition.  It  can 
not  be  received  at  second  hand.  .  .  .  Yoiirself  a 
newborn  bard  of  the  Holy  Ghost, — cast  behind  you 
all  conformity,  and  acquaint  man  at  first  hand  with 
Deity!''  What  is  this  but  a  Yankee  reading  of  the 
prophecy  made  by  Jeremiah  2700  years  ago:  "I  will 
put  my  law  in  their  inward  parts,  and  in  their  heart 
will  I  write  it;  and  I  will  be  their  God  and  they  shall  be 
my  people.  And  they  shall  teach  no  more  every 
man  his  neighbor  and  every  man  his  brother,  saying, 
Know  Jehovah;  for  they  shaH  all  know  me,  from  the 
least  of  them  unto  the  greatest  of  them,  sayeth 
Jehovah!" 

This  is  not  to  say  that  Emerson  spoke  as  a  mystic, 
I  doubt  if  he  could  be  legitimately  so  classified,  but  it 
is  to  say  that  this  religion  of  the  spirit  has  in  all  ages 
furnished  the  soil  out  of  which  mysticism,  of  whatever 
form,  has  grown.  For  it  is  the  very  essence  of  mysti- 
cism to  believe  that  God  can  be  immediate  y  known  in 
one's  own  consciousness,  when  that  consciousness 
has  become  conscience,  dross-drained,  and  attuned  to 
the  Heavenly  Voices.  Tennyson  spoke  for  the  whole 
brotherhood  when  he  wrote: 


CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM  15 

"Speak  to  Him,  thou,  for  He  hears; 

Spirit  with  spirit  can  meet; 
Closer  is  He  than  breathing 

And  nearer  than  hands  and  feet," 

This  is  the  mystic's  behef;  his  practise  is  to  discover 
and  to  use  the  means  which  will  enable  him  to  make 
his  o?-vii  life  one  with  the  life  of  God.  This  ''Life  of 
God  ;>5/ithin  the  soul  of  man/'  and  the  attempt  that 
m.eix  and  women  have  made  to  describe  and  explain 
that  immanent  Life,  and  the  methods  used  for  realizing 
it — all  this  makes  up  the  body  of  what  we  to-day  are 
calling  mysticism. 

But  this  is  not  to  say  that  the  mystics  use  no 
external  aids  in  their  great  enterprise  of  sanctity;  the 
divine  life  in  man  is  immiediate  but  it  is  not  instinctive. 
The  mystics,  like  all  of  us,  do  not  live  in  a  vacuum; 
they  also  belong  to  the  hum.an  tradition,  with  the  old 
human  traits  and  habits  deeply  inwoven,  and  they 
also,  like  the  rest  of  us,  are  compelled  to  make  use  of 
whatever  assistance  the  external  world  of  nature  or  of 
men  can  offer  them..  And  it  is  according  to  their 
choice  of  highways  along  which  to  travel  to  the  Unseen 
that  we  classify  them. 

Som.e  find  in  nature  the  "white  sacrament" 
through  which  to  pass  into  the  Eternal  Presence;  we 
call  them  nature  miystics.  Of  these  the  greatest 
miodern  example  is  that  consumptive  Englishman  who 
has  not  yet  received  a  tithe  of  the  recognition  which  is 
his  due,  Richard  Jefferies,  whose  books  are  like  tap- 
estries of  sunbeam  and  shadow,  and  whose  spirit  was 
like  a  wisp  of  vapor  transfigured  in  the  heavens. 
There  is  not  a  finer  grained  volume  in  the  whole  litera- 


16  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

tore  of  confessions  than  his  "Story  of  My  Heart,"  in 
whose  pages  you  will  find  such  expressions  of  nature 
mystici.m  as  these  sentences: 

"I  was  intensely  conscious  of  the  light.  I  felt  it; 
I  felt  the  presence  of  the  immense  powers  of  the  uni- 
verse; I  felt  out  into  the  depths  of  the  ether.  So  in- 
tensely conscious  of  the  sun,  the  sky,  the  limitless 
space,  I  felt  too  in  the  midst  of  eternity  then,  in  the 
midst  of  the  supernatural,  among  the  immortal,  and 
the  greatness  of  the  material  realized  the  spiritual. 
By  these  I  saw  my  soul;  by  these  I  knew  my  soul; 
by  these  I  knew  the  supernatural  to  be  more  intensely 
real  than  the  sun." 

Such  mysticism  as  this  has  never  been  absent 
from  the  world.  In  the  ninth  century  in  Persia  the 
Sufis,  in  their  reaction  to  the  rigidities  of  Mohamme- 
dan orthodoxy,  raised  it  to  a  lofty  pitch.  The  Songs  of 
Hafiz  are  full  of  it,  as  also  are  the  songs  of  his  modern 
child,  Rabindranath  Tagore.  It  was  the  same  passion 
as  that  which  filled  the  spirit  of  Watts-Dunton  in  our 
day,  as  expressed  in  his  little  essay  on  ''Science  and 
Poetry."  It  is  the  same  spiritual  splendor  as  that 
which  entinctured  the  soul  of  Kingsley,  as  confessed 
in  his  biography,  wherein  he  writes : 

"The  great  mysticism  is  the  belief  which  is  be- 
coming every  day  stronger  with  me,  that  all  symmet- 
rical natural  objects  are  types  of  some  spiritual  truth 
or  existence.  When  I  walk  the  fields,  I  am  oppressed 
now  and  then  with  an  innate  feeling  that  everything 
I  see  has  a  meaning,  if  I  could  but  understand  it. 
And  this  feeling  of  being  surrounded  with  truths  which 
I  can  not  grasp,  amounts  to  indescribable  awe  som^e 


CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM  17 

times.  Everything  seems  to  be  full  of  God's  reflex 
if  we  could  but  see  it." 

I  recommend  you  to  read  this  noble  passage  in  its 
entirety;  it  is  too  long  for  me  to  incorporate  here. 

Another  class  of  mystics  are  those  who  find  in 
love  or  beauty  the  open  door  to  God.  Our  best 
modem  example  here,  according  to  my  own  belief,  is 
Coventry  Patmore,  whose  poetry  should  rest  on  every 
Christian's  study  table.  If  there  is  any  surer,  deeper- 
going  plummet  than  he  sometimes  lets  down,  especially 
in  the  epilogues  and  prologues  of  his  "Angel  in  the 
House,''  I  have  never  discovered  it.  To  him  the  love 
between  man  and  woman  is  the  most  vivid  of  all 
symbolisms  of  the  love  that  is  God.    He  writes: 

"Female  and  male  God  made  the  man; 

His  image  is  the  whole,  not  half; 
And  in  our  love  we  divinely  scan 

The  love  which  is  between  Himself." 

In  an  unpublished  manuscript  called  ''Sponsa  Dei"  he 
declared  this  with  such  burning  ardor  that  he  was  at 
last  constrained  to  destroy  the  book  lest  he  had  used 
imagery  that  would  prove  too  strong  meat  for  the 
uninitiated.  It  was  this  passion  for  interpreting 
God's  love  for  us  through  the  love  of  man  and  woman 
that  inspired  him  to  make  a  famous  saying.  Pope 
had  said  before  him,  "The  proper  study  of  mankind 
is  man."  Arthur  Edward  Waite  wrote,  "The  proper 
study  of  mankind  is  God."  Patmore's  version  is, 
"The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  woman!" 

This  love  mysticism  is  a  very  old  thing.  In  the 
Middle  Ages  many  of  the  saints  used  the  Song  of 


18  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

Solomon  in  the  same  way.  Indeed,  this  is  the  use  it 
was  put  to  in  the  days  of  King  James,  as  the  headings 
in  our  accepted  version  will  testify,  headings  which 
might  alm.ost  have  been  lifted  from  that  golden  little 
book,  "On  the  Love  of  God,"  which  St.  Francis  of 
Sales  was  good  enough  to  write.  And  this  Francis 
reminds  us  of  that  other  greater  Francis,  he  of  Assisi, 
whose  vision  of  the  world  was  one  of  love  and  com- 
radeship leading  him  into  a  fraternity  with  the  animals, 
even,  as  the  little  brothers  and  sisters  of  man.  If  one 
desires  to  renew  his  sense  of  the  love  which  rules  the 
world  let  him  read  Francis's  great  hymn,  "The 
Canticle  of  the  Sun." 

Of  another  leading  are  those  who  have  found  in 
the  intellect  the  royal  road  to  the  Infinite  Soul.  The 
father  of  all  such,  I  suppose,  was  Plotinus,  that 
wonderful  Egyptian  whose  story  was  preserved  for  us 
by  Porphyry,  and  who  drained  the  nectar  of  Greek 
philosophy  into  the  wells  of  the  Christian  religion, 
giving  us  that  blend  of  philosophy  and  faith  which  we 
call  Neoplatonism.  To  Plotinus  the  intellectual 
faculties  were  as  the  steps  of  a  ladder  whereon  the 
soul  might  mount  into  the  very  burning  center  of 
Deity.  When  he  died  he  said,  "The  Divine  within 
me  goes  now  to  meet  the  Divine  outside  me."  Plotinus 
lived  in  the  third  century,  nevertheless  "the  fire 
still  bums  on  his  altar,"  and  there  are  evidences  of  his 
abiding  influence.  Again  and  again  some  great 
religious  teacher  has  arisen  who  first  lighted  his  taper 
at  that  far  off  fane.  In  the  Middle  Ages  it  is  probably 
Jacob  Boehme,  "the  inspired  shoemaker,"  who  stands 
as  the  head  of  philosophical  mystics.     It  was  his 


CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM  19 

teaching  which  kindled  the  enthusiasm  of  Wilham  Law, 
and  it  was  Law,  in  turn,  who  did  much  to  awaken 
Wesley  to  the  discovery  of  his  religion,  which  is  a 
**felt  salvation,  a  full  salvation,  and  a  free  salvation." 
One  of  the  very  greatest  of  all  these  philosophical 
mystics  was  Thomas  Traherne,  who  lived  in  England 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  who  was  not  discov- 
ered to  the  world  until  long,  long  afterwards,  and 
then  by  accident.  Traherne's  "Centuries  of  Medi- 
tations" is  richer  than  a  ruby  mine.  That  volume 
had  a  great  influence  on  Blake,  and  Blake,  as  we  all 
know,  has  wielded  a  spell  over  many  of  our  more 
recent  teachers  and  prophets.  Of  philosophical  mys- 
tics, of  the  present  time,  so  far  as  I  know  them,  I 
imagine  we  should  give  the  palm  to  Arthur  Edward 
Waite.  Waite's  life  work  has  been  in  literature  and 
research;  meanwhile  his  spirit  has  walked  the  mystic 
way,  and  the  volumes  in  which  his  literary  powers  are 
placed  at  the  service  of  his  spiritual  insight  are  second 
to  none  in  profundity,  piercing  intuitions  and  scholar- 
ship. His  '^Studies  in  Mysticism"  are  easier  to  read 
than  his  "Way  of  Divine  Union,"  but  the  latter 
is  the  greater  book,  a  book  so  great,  in  my  own  estima- 
tion, that  I  shall  not  attempt  to  describe  it  lest  I  be 
accused  of  exaggeration. 

The  philosophical  mystic  builds  a  reasoned  sys- 
tem of  thought  upon  his  mystical  experiences,  and  it 
is  through  thought  that  many  of  those  experiences 
have  come  to  him;  there  are  other  mystics,  however, 
close  akin  to  these,  who  are  content  with  the  depth  of 
experience  itself  and  have  no  ambitions  to  philoso- 
phize.    These  are  the  religious  or  devotional  mystics. 


20  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

In  many  ways  their  spirits  have  been  the  sweetest, 
their  sanctity  the  divinest,  their  influences  the  farthest 
reaching  and  the  most  wholesome.  To  them  the 
beatific  vision  has  come  through  the  path  of  prayer 
and  meditation.  The  greatest  of  all  woman  mystics, 
Saint  Teresa,  stands  in  this  class.  I  myself  have  not 
yet  got  round  to  a  very  careful  study  of  Saint  Teresa, 
but  even  in  what  glimpses  I  have  of  her,  her  spirit 
looms  so  far  toward  the  heavenly  heights  it  has 
impressed  me  with  that  same  feeling  of  unworthiness 
under  which  Peter  bent  when  he  cried,  "Depart  from 
me  for  I  am  a  sinful  man."  Fenelon  is  nearer  our 
common  human  clay,  albeit  there  was  evident  in  his 
noble  spirit  little  of  its  frailty.  If  one  desired  to  begin 
the  reading  of  mystical  literature  I  know  of  no  books 
that  would  give  him  a  kindlier  welcome  than  the 
Letters  of  Fenelon  or  the  Life  of  Fenelon  written  by 
Dr.  Mudge.  If  Fenelon  is  the  first  for  a  neophyte  to 
read  I  suppose  Ruysbroeck  would  be  the  last.  Of  this 
profound  spirit  I  shall  prefer  to  let  Mr.  Waite  speak: 

"If  his  be  not  the  greatest  name  in  Christian 
mysticism — as  a  writer  of  memorials  in  attainment — 
I  should  bracket  it  with  that  of  Eckehart  and  that  of 
St.  John  of  the  Cross,  but  I  have  a  feeling  that  he 
stands  first  in  the  ladder  of  the  ascent  to  the  supemals. 
He  has  drawn  from  heights  almost  inacessible,  and  up 
from  hardly  sounded  wells  of  being,  such  rumors  of 
eternal  things  and  states  of  the  soul  therein  as  have 
never  passed  otherwise  into  language  in  the  Christian 
world." 

These  are  the  various  groups  of  mystics — Nature, 
Love,  Philosophical  and  Devotional.    Gathered  about 


CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM  21 

the  edge  of  these  is  a  large  number  who  have  been 
drawn  toward  the  Hfe  but  have  never  yielded  them- 
selves entirely  to  it,  albeit  they  have  tasted  of  its 
hidden  manna  and  drunk  from  its  brimming  wells. 
Instead  of  calling  these  mystics  let  us  call  them  mysti- 
cal. But  while  they  have  not  belonged  entirely  to 
mysticism  their  influence  must  be  counted  on  that 
side,  for  their  life  work  has  almost  invariably  had  its 
origin  in  some  mystical  experience.  Inasmuch  as  I 
am  writing  of  mysticism  rather  than  the  mystics,  I 
can  not  forbear  mentioning  a  few  of  these. 

Thus,  St.  Augustine,  who  from  his  throne  in  the 
invisible,  ruled  the  thought  of  Europe  for  a  thousand 
years  and  wielded  an  empire  alongside  which  Napo- 
leon's sway  was  as  a  child's  dream,  wrestled  with 
doubt  and  weakness  until  on  that  memorable  day 
he  sat  in  the  Garden  of  Alypius  and  heard  the  voice 
sing'ng,  "Take  up  and  read!  Take  up  and  read!" 
The  vision  of  things  supernal  which  then  and  there 
came  to  him,  the  opening  up  of  the  eternal  life,  stands 
as  one  of  those  fountainheads  out  of  which,  now  and 
then,  the  world  gets  itse'f  new  bom. 

Who  can  compute  the  influence  of  Luther  on  the 
world?  What  would  Luther  have  been  had  he  not 
found  God  within  him?  So  also  with  Fox.  The 
entire  movement  which  bears  his  name  had  not  its 
beginning  in  him,  properly  speaking,  but  in  his 
awaken  ng  to  an  Over  Soul  inside  his  own.  What 
would  Catholicism  have  been  after  the  Reformation 
had  not  Ignatius  Loyola  chanced  to  read  the  New 
Testament  while  lying  wounded  in  bed  in  an  obscure 
Spanish   hamlet,   and   thereby  had    opened    to  his 


22  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

inward  vision  the  everlasting  Reality?  Who  can 
believe  that  Methodism  would  have  been  bom  to  save 
England  from  revolution  and  America  from  formalism 
had  not  John  Wesley,  in  the  little  Aldersgate  prayer- 
meeting,  felt  that  ''strange  warming  of  his  heart?" 
How  would  the  Tractarian  movement  have  been 
born  to  call  England  back  to  her  walk  with  God  had 
not  Newman  while  yet  a  boy  in  an  evangelical  home 
passed  through  the  crisis  o'  the  new  birth,  from  which 
there  emerged  his  conviction  of  **two  and  two  only 
absolutely  and  luminous V  self-evident  beings,  myself 
and  my  Creator?"  All  these  may  not  be  counted 
among  the  mystics  proper,  yet  their  work  in  the  world 
must  surely  be  counted  to  the  credit  of  mysticism. 

Widely  diverse  as  these  have  all  been,  mystical 
and  mystics,  they  have  had  in  common  the  one  pro- 
found experience  of  the  immediate  Presence  of  God, 
and  they  have,  for  the  most  part,  in  spite  of  their  va- 
rious personal  idiosyncrasies,  used  the  same  methods, 
not  consciously  as  following  a  formula,  but  instinctively, 
because  the  soul  is  so  made  that  she  must  in  the  long 
run  always  travel  the  same  path  to  reach  her  goal. 
Out  of  this  common  experience  there  has  gradually 
evolved  that  tradition  of  the  mystic  life  which  we  call 
the  Mystic  Way.  The  Mystic  Way  is  the  answer  to 
our  question,  iHow  does  the  mystic  climb  the  steep 
ascent  to  heaven?  Inasmuch  as  one  could  write 
thousands  of  essays  and  hundreds  of  books  on  that 
Way,  we  shall  obviously  be  able  to  do  no  more  than 
sketch  it  in  a  few  words. 

It  begins,  as  all  religious  life  begins,  with  conver- 
sion, whether  that  new  birth  be  sudden,  like  Kipling's 


CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM  23 

dawn  that  "comes  up  like  thunder,"  or  gradual,  like 
Homer's  quiet  waking  of  the  rosy-fingered  mom. 
One  of  the  typical  experiences  here  is  the  conversion 
of  Madame  Guy  on,  who,  though  she  does  not  rank 
as  the  first  among  the  great  mystics,  has  a  right  to  a 
place  in  the  great  line.  When  nineteen  years  of  age 
this  woman  went  to  a  Franciscan  friar  to  inquire  the 
way  of  the  soul.  Let  me  give  the  story  of  what  hap- 
pened in  her  own  words: 

"He  hardly  came  forward  and  was  a  long  time 
without  speaking  to  me.  I,  however,  did  not  fail  to 
speak  to  him  and  to  tell  him  in  a  few  words  my  diffi- 
culties on  the  subject  of  prayer.  He  at  once  replied, 
'Madam,  you  are  seeking  without  that  which  you  have 
within.  Accustom  yourself  to  seek  God  in  your  own 
heart,  and  you  will  find  Him.'  Having  said  this, 
he  left  me.  The  next  morning  he  was  greatly  astonish- 
ed when  I  visited  him  again  and  told  him  the 
effect  which  these  words  had  had  upon  my  soul:  for, 
indeed,  they  were  as  an  arrow,  which  pierced  my  heart 
through  and  through.  I  felt  in  this  moment  a  pro- 
found wound  which  was  full  of  delight  and  love — a. 
wound  so  sweet  that  I  desired  it  would  never  heal. 
0,  my  Lord,  you  were  within  my  heart,  and  you  asked 
of  me  only  that  I  should  return  within,  in  order  that  I 
might  feel  your  presence.  0,  Infinite  Goodness,  you 
were  so  near,  and  I,  running  here  and  there  to  seek  you, 
found  you  not!'' 

After  such  an  experience  as  this  the  mystic 
passes  through  purgation.  Everything  within  the  char- 
acter must  now  be  readjusted  to  the  new  knowledge 
of  God.     It  has  been  in  this  effort  that  the  mystics 


24  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

have  often  subjected  themselves  to  those  extrava- 
gances of  asceticism  which  now  so  shock  our  more  easy 
going  methods.  But,  extravagant  or  not,  the  soul  can 
never  rest  in  God  except  she  have  herself  dross-drained 
and  pure,  and  some  form  of  purgation  is  necessary  to 
that  end. 

After  purgation  there  usually  comes  illumination. 
This  is  as  the  honeymoon  of  the  Mystic  Way,  a  season 
when  the  worshiper  is  so  caught  up  into  light  and  joy 
that  it  is  not  lawful  for  us  here  to  describe  it  even  if  we 
could.  Illumination  is  succeeded  by  the  most  awful 
experience  v/hich  can  come  to  mortal  man.  It  is 
that  nadir  of  despair  when  the  spirit,  swinging  pendu- 
lum-like back  from  the  new  light,  returns  once  more 
into  its  own  depths  and  there  begins  a  more  profound 
purgation  which  ultimately  leaves  not  a  shred  of  the 
old  self -centered  life  behind.  This  is  the  Dark  Night 
of  the  Soul.  If  you  wish  to  learn  just  how  much  a 
mortal  can  suffer  read  some  of  the  first  hand  descrip- 
tions of  that  descent  into  hell. 

Out  of  these  depths  the  spirit  again  ascends  in  due 
time  to  the  final  stage,  that  of  union,  wherein  a  man  no 
longer  lives  but  Christ  lives  in  him,  so  that  the  mystic 
is  indifferent  to  the  vicissitudes  of  his  own  fate,  but 
lives  as  an  organ  through  which  God  can  reveal 
Himself  to  the  world. 

I  know  that  this  description  of  the  Mystic  Way 
sounds  hard-and-fast,  like  a  geometrical  design,  and 
it  is  that.  Life  in  the  actual  process  of  living  doesn't 
always  follow  the  route-maps  which  we  lay  out  for  it, 
but  this  is  an  approximation  to  the  story  of  the  Way, 
though  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  very  few  mystics 


CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM  25 

have  trod  it  to  the  final  end,  as  Dante  did  when  he 
came  right  up  to  the  unfolding  of  the  Eternal  Rose  and 
found  his  faculties  swept  away  in  the  last  beatitude. 
Only  the  elect  souls  can  tread  it  at  all;  the  most  of  us 
must  be  content  with  following  afar  off. 

The  Mystic  Way,  as  I  have  described  it,  is  com- 
mon to  both  Christian  and  non-Christian  mystics 
alike,  though  they  describe  it  in  different  language. 
We  must  ever  bear  in  mind  that  mysticism  is  a  univer- 
sal form  of  religion.  The  non-Christian  mystic  is 
one  who  has  walked  the  path  outside  the  influence  of 
the  Gospels;  the  Christian  is  one  who  has  walked  it 
under  the  guidance  of  Christ  and  of  the  Christian 
Church. 

I  wish  I  had  time  to  deal  for  a  little  with  the 
Christian  mystic's  understanding  of  Christ.  There  is 
time  only  to  say  this,  that  to  him  the  character  of 
Christ  was  not  a  ready-m.ade  magically  created  thing, 
but  an  achievement;  that  the  Master  had  to  walk  each 
step  of  the  way  himself  and  had  to  taste  to  the  full 
the  difficulties  and  sorrows  of  the  life  of  man  and  God; 
and  that  to  follow  Christ  does  not  mean  to  accept 
with  the  mind  some  patented  scheme  of  theology,  but 
nieans  to  retrace  in  our  own  experience  the  stages 
through  which  he  himself  passed.  This  is  not  a  mere 
imitation  of  Christ's  life,  but  a  reproduction  of  it. 

Neither  is  there  tinie  to  give  our  own  verdict  on 
the  mystics,  even  if  such  as  we  could  possibly  claim 
the  right  to  judge  such  as  they.  However,  before  we 
conclude,  I  must  speak  of  one  or  two  of  the  more 
current  criticisms  of  the  mystics. 

They  are  sometimes  accused  of  sloth,  and  charged 


26  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

with  an  indifference  to  the  actual  work  of  Hfe,  Hving 
alone,  nursing  their  own  visions,  as  so  many  religious 
aristocrats,  neither  toiling  nor  spinning  the  web  of 
human  destiny.  It  is  pointed  out  that  Teresa  did  not 
leave  her  cell  for  twenty  years,  refusing  often  during 
that  time  even  to  see  her  family. 

Those  who  speak  thus  have  read  only  a  fragment 
of  the  records.  They  have  not  followed  the  story  of 
Teresa,  after  she  was  accepted  by  the  Father  and  sent 
to  do  his  work  after  her  long  tarrying  in  Jerusalem, 
when  she  made  Spain  a  new  country  through  her  pro- 
digious active  ministries.  They  have  forgotten  that 
while  St.  Bernard  spent  much  time  in  prayer  he  was 
also  a  statesman  who  held  Europe  in  his  hand.  They 
have  forgotten  that  it  was  St.  Francis  who  drove 
leprosy  from  Europe  and  undermined  feudalism.  They 
have  forgotten — but  there  is  not  time  to  rehearse 
the  labors  of  the  mystics  in  the  regeneration  of  the 
world. 

Others  sometimes  accuse  the  mystics  of  vague- 
ness, dreaminess,  remarking  that  the  very  word 
mysticism  derives  from  a  Greek  term  meaning  to  close 
the  eyes.  But  mysticism  is  the  very  opposite  of  that, 
it  is  the  effort  of  man  at  his  highest  to  find  Reality,  to 
dispel  all  mists  and  fogginess  from  his  soul.  You  will 
not  find  such  lucid  minds  anywhere  as  in  many  of  them. 
They  sound  vague  only  when  we  have  followed  them 
out  of  our  depths.  As  the  Master  is  reported  by 
Clement  of  Alexandria  to  have  said,  "My  mysteries 
are  for  me  and  the  sons  of  my  house.'' 

On  all  these  matters  I  can  only  urge  you  to  go  to 
the  literature  itself  and  there  verify  for  your  own 


CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM  27 

minds  these  things  which  I  am  saying.  Of  that 
literature  one  can  here  say  Httle.  The  masterpieces 
of  the  mystics  themselves  may  be  purchased,  many 
of  them,  in  Methuen's  Library  of  Devotion,  little 
volumes  bound  in  green,  which  m^ay  be  purchased  for 
a  quarter  apiece.  If  one  cares  to  go  into  it  for  a  care- 
ful study  he  might  well  begin  with  Will  Dyson's  little 
"Studies  in  Christian  Mysticism,''  an  elementary 
text-book  of  the  subject.  Then  he  could  turn  to 
Fleming's  "Mysticism  in  Christianity,"  which  would 
lead  him  on  to  the  two  volumes  of  sterling  value  by 
R.  M.  Jones.  By  this  time  he  would  appreciate  Mrs. 
Herrman's  sparkling  treatise,  "The  Meaning  and 
Value  of  Mysticism,"  which  in  turn,  would  lead  to  Miss 
Underhill's  great  volume,  "Mysticism,"  and  to  her 
"Mystic  Way."  After  this  would  come  Waite's 
"The  Way  of  Divine  Union,"  and,  last  of  all,  the 
greatest  of  all,  "The  Mystical  Element  in  Religion," 
written  by  that  Roman  Catholic  theologian.  Baron 
von  Hugel. 

Surely  the  time  has  come  when  we  preachers  can 
not  permit  ourselves  to  remain  in  ignorance  of  these 
masters  of  the  art  of  living  the  spiritual  life.  It  seems 
to  me  that  a  preacher  who  doesn't  know  his  St. 
Augustine  or  his  a  Kempis  is  as  derelict  as  the  musi- 
cian who  has  never  familiarized  himself  with  Wagner 
or  Beethoven.  Sooner  or  later  we  are  going  to  learn 
that  all  our  efforts  to  win  men  to  the  Gospel  by  talking 
to  them  about  temporary  problems,  social,  political, 
or  even  personal,  are  doomed  to  fail.  Man  is  a  God- 
haunted  being  crying  for  the  divine,  knowing  in  his 
heart,  as  Augustine  has  it,  that  we  are  made  for  Him 


28  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

and  that  our  hearts  are  restless  until  they  rest  in  Him. 
In  the  day  when  we  preachers  rediscover  that  our  one 
and  only  business,  as  preachers,  is  with  the  soul,  and 
with  God,  and  with  the  eternal  destinies  of  the  myste- 
rious human  spirit,  we  shall  instinctively  turn  and 
place  ourselves  under  the  feet  of  the  saints.  Then  and 
then  only  shall  we  learn  how  truly  to  preach  so  that 
our  words  will  drop  from  our  lips  like  cannon-balls, 
and  men  will  tremble  as  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord. 

Speaking  for  myself,  if  that  liberty  may  here  be 
permitted,  I  may  say  it  was  as  the  beginning  of  a  new 
life  in  my  ministry  when  I  learned  to  walk  with  the 
mystics.  They  have  taught  me  many,  many  things, 
not  the  least  of  which  is  that  if  religion  is  to  be  my 
religion  it  must  somehow  become  a  m-atter  of  my  own 
consciousness,  and  also  that  as  long  as  a  man  has  his 
own  will  at  the  center  of  his  life  instead  of  God's  will 
he  is  an  egotist  and  a  lost  man.  Not  until  we  are  able 
to  join  the  Master  and  the  mystics  in  the  Garden  and 
say,  not  only  with  our  lips  but  with  our  lives,  ''Not 
my  will  but  Thine  be  done,"  shall  we  even  begin  to 
know  what  Christianity  really  is,  for  the  way  of  the 
mystics  is  the  way  of  the  divine  life,  every  son  of  which 
might  take  for  his  motto  that  great  word  uttered  by 
one  of  the  old  German  saints,  ''I  want  to  be  to  the 
Eternal  Goodness  what  a  man's  right  arm  is  to  a  man." 


THE  SECRET  PLACE  OF  THE 

MOST  HIGH 

The  Kabalah,  with  its  strange  lights,  its  broken 
shadows,  its  echoes  of  mysterious  dead  philosophies, 
is  now  an  unknown  name  to  all  save  those  few  anti- 
quarians who  busy  themselves  among  the  whispers 
of  an  old  past.  But  once  was  when  every  thinker 
kept  its  literature  at  his  elbow,  finding  among  its  cryp- 
tic teachings  many  light-darting  jewels  of  profound 
meaning.  It  was  a  favorite  de\dce  of  the  Jewish 
theosophists  who  created  the  Kabalah  literature  to 
reduce  their  visions  of  Divine  truth  to  symbolical 
form,  thereby  becoming  enabled  to  tell  much  on  a 
single  page.  One  of  their  favorite  symbols  was  that 
of  a  human  figure  with  the  various  hierogl5T)hs  of  the 
knowledge  of  God  distributed  among  its  limbs,  thereby 
suggesting  that  the  human  is  a  gate-way  through 
which  we  pass  into  the  Divine.  This  symbolism 
has  now  lost  its  voice,  and  stares  at  us  mutely  from 
the  yellow  pages,  wholly  unable  to  express  itself  in 
our  modern  speech;  but  surely  the  truth  itself,  that 
we  walk  into  the  heart  of  God  along  the  ways  of  man, 
abides  still,  and  must  abide.  I  myself  feel  this,  at  any 
rate,  in  regard  to  the  vexed  question  of  God's  manner 
of  revealing  Himself,  for  I  am  convinced  that  if  we 
can  really  comprehend  the  secrets  of  man's  speech  we 


30  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

shall  be  thereby  enabled  to  interpret  the  speech  of 
God. 

Whatever  else  we  may  believe  about  the  mechan- 
ism of  expression,  there  is  one  fact  of  great  significance 
of  which  we  must  lay  hold,  for  it  will  lead  us  far,  and 
that  fact  is  this:  that  we  humans  use  speech  for  two 
very  different  purposes;  one  is  to  comm.unicate  our 
thoughts,  that  is,  to  instruct  others  as  to  our  purposes, 
to  direct,  to  command,  to  inform;  the  other  is  to  reveal 
that  which  is  within  us,  to  confess,  to  share  with 
another  our  own  inm.ost  experiences  and  silent  dreams. 
The  first  is  practical,  pragmatic,  having  as  its  end  the 
getting  of  some  work  done;  the  other  is  mystical, 
evasive,  shy,  and  has  for  its  end  the  bringing  of  another 
into  fellowship  with  our  own  heart.  The  former  we 
might  describe  as  the  speech  of  information;  the  latter 
as  the  speech  of  revelation. 

An  architect  carries  his  plans  with  him  to  his 
building,  lays  out  the  day's  labor  for  his  men,  instructs 
them  as  to  his  designs,  and  then  gives  them  directions 
from  time  to  time  as  to  how  this  and  how  that  should 
be  done.  This  is  an  example  of  what  I  have  called, 
for  lack  of  a  term  more  adequate,  the  speech  of 
instruction.  A  poet  sits  by  the  broken  rocks  that 
guard  the  approaches  of  the  sea;  he  looks  out  over  the 
moving  waters  on  which  the  mists  are  weaving  their 
transient  tapestries;  he  watches  the  gulls  dipping  and 
feels  the  salt  moisture  on  his  cheek;  as  he  gazes,  the 
sea  becomes  for  him  an  emblem  of  the  troubled  deep 
of  life,  and  beseems  to  go  down  under  the  many  waters 
of  tragedy,  or  to  be  enveloped  in  the  tides  of  mystery. 
So  he  begins  to  write: 


THE  SECRET  PLACE  OF  THE  MOST  HIGH        31 

"Break,  break,  break,  on  thy  cold  gray  stones,  O  sea!" 

That  is  the  speech  of  revelation,  which  has  for  its  end  no 
other  purpose  than  the  communication  of  the  poet's 
inmost  feeHngs  to  those  who  may  care  to  hsten. 

Literatures  of  Power  and  Knowledge 

It  is  this  two-fold  character  of  speech  that  gave 
its  point  to  DeQuincey's  famous  dictum,  that  books 
are  naturally  divided  into  two  classes:  the  literature 
of  knowledge  and  the  literature  of  power;  for  it  is 
obvious  that  the  literature  of  knowledge  can  be 
nothing  other  than  a  man's  desire  to  coro.municate 
informiation,  or  direction,  to  his  fellows;  and  that  the 
literature  of  power  is  simply  a  man's  attempt  to  reveal 
to  others,  to  share  with  them  his  inward  experiences 
of  this  mystery  which  we  call  life. 

The  literature  of  knowledge  has  become  volumi- 
nous in  our  day.  Text-books  for  schools;  volumes  of 
science,  pure  and  applied;  histories;  encyclopedias; 
dictionaries;  reference  works  of  other  types;  trade 
journals;  newspapers;  all  these  and  numberless  others 
are  coming  forth  in  ever  increasing  number  to  in- 
struct us  of  the  facts  necessary  to  know  in  this  our 
present  pilgrimage.  Such  literature  is  valuable  and 
interesting,  nay,  it  is  essential  and  indispensable,  and 
often  of  very  great  worth. 

It  differs,  however,  fundamentally  and  eternally, 
from  that  other  type  of  writing  which  springs  from 
man's  self-confession  of  experience.  It  is  here  that 
we  find  the  sacred  books  of  the  race:  its  Bible,  its 
Vedas,   its   Koran;   its    Kalevela;  poetry  and   song, 


32  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

drama  and  fiction,  except  where  fiction  is  made  the 
vehicle  of  propaganda;  prophecy  and  inspirational 
literature  of  many  kinds,  and,  very  often,  philos- 
ophy. 

How  deep-going  is  the  difference  between  these 
two  types  of  books  may  be  made  very  clear  to  ns  by  a 
concrete  exam.ple.  On  one  side  of  mxy  table  as  I 
write  is  a  copy  of  Professor  Macoy's  very  able  "His- 
tory of  Political  Parties  of  Amierica,  1846-1861;"  and 
on  the  other  side  is  a  volume  by  Em.erson  containing 
his  lectures  delivered  during  the  sam.e  period  as  that 
covered  by  the  history.  But  how  different  they  are, 
even  though  in  the  lectures  we  are  confronted  by  those 
same  problems  with  which  the  political  parties 
wrestled  in  that  troubled  time.  The  former  volume 
gives  us  names,  facts,  dates,  etc.,  in  plentiful  number; 
the  latter  gives  us  the  broodings  of  a  great  spirit  in 
which  the  Civil  War  had  becoxe  an  intimate  ex- 
perience. 

"Men  change  but  man  remains  the  same,"  said 
the  wise  Goethe.  It  is  for  this  reason,  and  not  because 
of  any  desire  to  m^ake  invidious  comiparisons,  that  we 
must  recognize  the  fact  that  the  literature  of  knowledge 
is  in  its  very  natiu'e  transient  and  perishable,  while 
the  literature  of  power  will  often  survive  the  centuries. 
This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  knowledge  is  always  chang- 
ing, new  facts  come  and  old  facts  go,  and  what  is 
science  in  one  generation  becom.es  superstition  in  the 
next.  "But  man  remains  the  same."  Always  he  is 
confronted  by  "the  show  of  things,"  by  nature  with 
her  lights  and  half-lights,  her  ritual  of  seasons,  by  the 
baffling  tragedies  of  existence,  by  love  and  hate,  by 


THE  SECRET  PLACE  OF  THE  MOST  HIGH        33 

dream  and  disillusionment,  and  by  the  subduing 
mysteries  of  sorrow  and  death.  Therefore  is  it  that  a 
trae  note  from  the  soul  will  often  outlast  the  pyramids- 
and  remain  while  literatures  of  knowledge  vanish 
away. 

Thales  was  a  scientist  wise  in  his  own  age,  a 
thinker  with  a  continental  brain,  the  m^aster  of  many 
facts;  but  his  writings  to-day  seem  childish  and  absurd 
when  read  alongside  the  last  volum^e  from  the  univer- 
sities. Homer,  on  the  contrary,  seems  timeless  as  the 
soul  itself;  his  pages  still  have  power  to  grip  our  minds, 
and  the  school-boy  of  to-day  can  join  the  Athenian 
youth  of  a  remote  yesterday  in  hanging  with  breathless 
interest  over  the  old  tales  on  which  lie  the  dew  of  a 
never  waning  morning. 

To  understand  a  book  belonging  to  the  literature 
of  knowledge  we  need  nothing  more  than  a  mind  of 
average  strength  and  a  certain  equipment  of  informa- 
tion. Such  books  may,  so  to  speak,  be  taken  apart, 
like  a  machine,  their  parts  examined  and  their 
ingredients  analyzed.  But  to  understand  a  book 
belonging  to  the  literature  of  power,  imagination  is 
needed,  and  sympathy,  and  a  certain  intuitive  power 
of  insight.  Anybody  who  can  take  the  time  to 
accumulate  his  data  and  who  learns  to  arrange  it  in 
an  intelligible  order  can  write  the  former  type  of  book; 
how  the  real  book  of  power  is  written  can  never  be 
learned,  for  it  belongs  to  the  secret  of  genius.  A 
school-boy  can  take  apart  the  tables  in  the  "World's 
Almanac"  and  learn  how  it  is  done;  but  no  amount  of 
dissecting  will  ever  teach  school-boy  or  man  how 
to  write  a  "Paradise  Lost." 


34  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

God's  Two-Fold  Speech 

Now,  the  significance  of  all  this  for  our  religion  is 
that  the  speech  of  man,  who  is  made,  as  we  believe, 
in  the  image  of  God,  is  an  analogy,  nay,  if  I  may 
borrow  an  expression  from  science,  a  "working  model," 
of  the  speech  of  God.  God  also  speaks  for  these  two 
purposes — to  instruct,  to  guide,  to  inform  us;  and  to 
reveal  the  secrets  of  His  own  infinite  heart. 

Like  the  architect  of  our  previous  illustration, 
God  has  a  plan  for  the  world,  for  He  is  the  artificer  of 
the  destinies  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race.  Our 
human  history  may  appear  to  be  a  mere  jumble  of 
unrelated  happenings,  bat  it  is  not,  for  behind  the 
chaos  of  events  there  silently  shapes  itself  the  Divine 
plan  of  creation,  a  plan  toward  which  the  ages  move. 
The  incidents  of  our  experiences,  the  events  of  history, 
the  objects  of  the  material  universe,  these  are  the 
facts  which  God  has  spread  before  us.  His  words  of 
information  and  command,  the  better  to  enable  us  to 
carry  into  realization  His  beneficent  purpose  with  man. 

Just  as  the  student  may  analyze  a  volun  e  written 
for  human  instruction,  dissecting  it  into  its  elements, 
breaking  it  into  its  constituent  parts,  the  better  to 
discover  its  teaching,  so  does  science  work  with  the 
book  of  God's  instruction  which  we  call  the  universe. 
It  is  man's  way  of  cataloguing  the  facts  that  God  has 
given  us  that  we  may  the  better  carry  on  His  work: 
His,  yet  ours,  for  He  has  delegated  much  of  it  to  us. 
In  the  eye  of  science,  God  is  an  architect,  the  universe 
reveals  His  plan,  and  science  is  the  attempt  to  interpret 
and  follow  the  plan. 

From  this  point  of  view,  religion  becomes   one 


THE  SECRET  PLACE  OF  THE  MOST  HIGH        35 

among  the  many  agencies  of  social  reform,  a  means  to 
an  end,  designed  to  assist  in  the  necessary  formation 
of  the  race.  The  aim  of  faith  becomes  the  setting  up 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth;  churches  are  organ- 
ized to  that  end,  and  behef  is  the  dynamic  of  its 
reahzation;  theology  becomes  the  attempt  to  under- 
stand the  Divine  plan  the  better  to  carry  it  out;  and 
character  is  examined  from  the  point  of  view  of 
morality.  With  such  an  understanding  of  religion 
the  Christian  becomes  a  soldier  of  the  common  weal, 
undertaking  necessary  reforms  in  society,  a  worker 
of  human  architecture,  who  demands  that  above  all 
things  religion  shall  justify  itself  in  tangible  results. 

All  this  is  valid,  is  true,  is  commendable  beyond 
all  words;  he  who  would  quarrel  w  th  it  forgets  a  full 
half  of  the  cause  and  purpose  of  religion;  nevertheless, 
it  is  only  a  hemisphere  of  the  world  of  faith,  and  he 
who  stops  there  will  miss  from  his  life  of  worship  the 
better  half.  For  God  is  a  being  as  well  as  a  purpose, 
and  does  not  exhaust  Himself  in  His  active  plans. 
To  borrow  the  language  of  James  Martineau,  a 
superb  thinker,  an  incomparable  seer,  gifted  above 
almost  all  other  men  of  his  times  with  the  ''divine 
power  to  use  words,"  God  also  "is  a  Mind,  reserving 
within  Himself  infinite  powers,  ever  awake  and 
moving;  thought,  large  as  space  and  deep  and  solemn 
as  the  sea;  holiness,  stern  as  the  mountains,  and  pure 
as  the  breath  that  sighs  around  them;  a  mercy,  quick 
as  the  light,  and  gentle  as  the  tints  that  make  it. 
It  s  not  for  these  to  remain  inert  and  repressed,  as 
though  they  were  not.  They  must  have  way,  and 
reach  their  overflow;  and  if  only  we  place  our  spirits 


36  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

right,  we  may  catch  the  blessed  flood,  and  find  it  as 
the  waters  of  regeneration.  Beyond  and  behind 
every  definite  end  of  which  it  is  needful  to  appraise  us, 
there  actually  exists  in  the  divine  nature  an  indefinite 
affluence  of  living  perfection,  which  can  not  go  for 
nothing  in  the  universe.  It  may  not  have  a  word  to 
say  to  others;  but  whispers  will  escape  it  on  its  own 
account;  it  may  not  be  heard,  and  yet  articulately 
overheard;  and,  could  we  only  find  the  focus  of  those 
stray  tone-,  we  should  understand  more  than  any 
knowledge  can  tell;  we  should  learn  the  very  prayers 
that  Heaven  makes  for  only  Heaven  to  hear,  and 
should  catch  the  soliloquy  of  God.  And  not  only  can 
we  find  it,  but  we  are  ever  in  it;  and  beneath  the  dome 
of  the  universe,  which  is  all  center  and  no  circumfer- 
ence, we  can  not  stand  where  the  musings  of  the  eternal 
mind  do  not  murmur  round  us,  and  the  visions  of  His 
lonely,  loving  thought  appear." 

The  Secret  of  the  Seer 

These  are  great  matters  greatly  said,  and  give  us 
the  true  secret  of  the  prophet  and  the  seer  and  the 
poet,  for  to  all  these  God  is  an  end  in  Himself,  if  I  may 
hazard  so  awkward  an  expression,  to  be  reverenced 
and  obeyed,  not  for  the  sake  of  His  purposes,  but  for 
His  own  infinitely  lovable  being.  To  such  mystics 
religion  is  an  end  in  itself,  the  purpose  of  it  being,  if 
we  must  use  that  term,  the  leading  of  the  human  heart 
into  the  secret  places  of  the  Most  High  Heart. 

''Why  does  this  universe  exist?"  asked  one  friend 
of  another,  while  sitting  together  under  a  moonlit 
sky.     'Tt  exists,"  was  the  reply,  ''just  in  order  that 


THE  SECRET  PLACE  OF  THE  MOST  HIGH        37 

you  and  I  might  sit  here  together."  There  is  a 
wisdom  beneath  the  surface  of  these  words  that  teaches 
us  the  great,  and  almost  forgotten,  end  of  rehgion, 
which  is  that  we  may  Hve  in  the  enjoyment  of  com- 
panionship with  God.  If  action  grows  meaningless 
to  us,  and  the  hard  work  of  life  sometimes  palls  upon 
us,  and  we  grow  inwardly  restless  and  discontented,  it 
is  because  God  has  made  us  for  Himself,  and  our 
hearts  must  be  restless  until  they  rest  in  Him! 

It  is  the  great  misfortune  of  those  who  are  smitten 
with  the  superstition  of  always  being  busy  that  they 
miss  the  supreme  joy  of  hiding  in  the  secret  places  of 
the  Most  High;  they  are  ever  doing  things,  piling  up 
achievements  around  the  circumference  of  life,  but 
they  are  hollow  at  the  center,  and  know  naught  of  the 
cooling  shadow  of  His  wings,  or  of  that  perfect  fruition 
of  life  which  comes  alone  to  them  who  have  learned 
the  secret  of  loving  God.  It  is  in  that  still  center  that 
the  mystic  lives,  and  the  poet,  and,  oftentimes,  the 
child;  he  who  has  permitted  his  heart  to  grow  old 
within  him,  who  has  let  the  poet  die,  and  the  faculties 
of  wonder  and  reverence,  ''has  a  name  to  live,"  but, 
in  all  high  senses  of  life,  is  really  dead. 

The  Revelations  of  Summer 

If  there  is  one  season  in  the  year,  more  than 
another,  fitted  to  awaken  in  us  the  sense  of  a  Divine 
Presence,  it  is  summer,  whose  ritual  of  long  days  and 
enchanting  nights  is  now  beginning  about  us.  Wise  is 
he  who  will  often  stray  alone  under  the  voyaging 
clouds,  lost  in  still  reveries,  breathing  in  an  air  more 
than  the  atmosphere,  inhaling  fragrances  from  the 


38  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

flowers  that  know  so  much  more  than  they  tell;  in  the 
slanting  rain,  the  green  spread  of  fields,  the  murmuring 
streams,  the  hide  and  seek  of  storms,  the  golden  arch- 
ing of  the  daytime  sky,  the  night  lighting  of  the  heaven, 
finding,  not  a  worlanan,  m.erely,  toiling  to  achieve  an 
end,  but  an  Infinite  Being,  in  love  with  His  own  life, 
engaged  in  a  never  tiring  gam^e  with  Himself,  like  an 
Infinite  Child.  In  such  hours  the  body  is  laid  at  rest 
and  m.an  becom_es  a  living  soul.  One  such  hour  Vvill 
teach  us  more  than  all  the  sages  can. 

He  who  would  thus  climb  into  the  secret  place  of 
the  Most  High  must  guard  well  his  faculty  of  rever- 
ence, for  that  is  nothing  other  than  the  soul's  sense  of 
touch  which  brings  it  into  contact  with  the  beauty  of 
the  Invisible  One.  As  when  sight  goes  we  lose  the 
outspread  feast  of  light,  and  form,  and  color,  and 
shade,  so  when  reverence  goes  we  necessarily  lose  the 
m^ore  subtle  revelations  of  God  which  are  reserved 
for  those  that  love  Him.  Without  reverence  a  man 
may  be  worldly  wise,  and  successful  after  the  coarse 
m-easure  of  the  world,  but  in  the  things  of  the  soul 
he  is  an  imbecile. 

This  m^eans  that  we  must  keep  alive  in  us  the 
spirit  of  the  child.  For  what  God  is  in  Himself,  in 
contradistinction  to  what  He  does,  is  reserved  wholly 
for  those  who  have  the  intuitive  miind,  the  clairvoyant 
understanding,  the  poetic  faculty  of  sympathy;  and 
these  live  only  in  the  unsophisticated  soul.  There 
are  many  things,  the  deepest  things  of  existence, 
which  God  can  not  reveal  to  the  scholar,  the  wise  and 
the  learned,  but  reserves  for  the  babes. 

Always  we  must  reserve  a  still  center  in  our  being 


THE  SECRET  PLACE  OF  THE  MOST  HIGH        39 

in  which  to  overhear  the  silent  whisperings  of  our 
God,  even  as  the  Quietists  of  all  generations  have 
taught  us;  a  habit  of  reverent  listening;  a  faculty  for 
feeling  the  companionship  of  the  reticent  Father  of 
the  heart.  The  picture-book  of  the  external  world 
must  be  laid  aside,  the  soul  must  patiently  drive  from 
its  precincts  the  almost  endless  pageantry  of  imagery 
which  seeks  to  monopolize  its  consciousness;  it  must 
learn  how  to  wait  with  patience  in  the  withdrawn 
Holy  of  Holies,  to  listen  for  the  overtones  of  the 
Infinite  self-communings,  to  stretch  itself  down  into  the 
divine  darkness  that  lies  behind  the  moving-picture 
screen  of  every  day  consciousness,  in  order  to  enter 
into  the  shadow,  the  cooling,  healing,  all-satisfying 
shadow,  that  lies  under  the  quiet  wings  of  the  Almighty. 


THE  INVISIBLE  WORLD 

During  those  seven  golden  years  while  he  stood 
in  St.  Mary's  at  Oxford,  laying  England  under  the 
strange  enchantment  of  his  voice,  John  Henry  New- 
man preached  a  sermon  on  the  same  topic  that  we 
now  have  before  us.  Taking  as  his  text  the  great 
utterance  of  Paul,  "VvHiile  we  look  not  at  the  things 
which  are  seen,  but  at  the  things  which  are  not  seen; 
for  the  things  which  are  seen  are  temporal;  but  the 
things  which  are  not  seen  are  eternal,"  he  unfolded 
paragraph  after  paragraph  of  such  serene  and  silvery 
eloquence  that  until  this  day  the  serm.on  stands  as 
a  classic  in  homiletical  literature.  One  of  the  men  who 
heard  it  was  Walter  Bagehot,  banker,  financier,  and 
political  economist,  of  great  practical  experience  and 
sagacity.  So  drav^n  was  he  by  the  unearthly  appeal 
of  the  serm.on  that  he  had  it  printed  and  bound  in  a 
separate  volume  that  he  might  carry  it  about  with 
him  in  his  pocket,  the  better  to  renew  its  influences 
from  time  to  timie.  In  the  midst  of  the  clatter  and 
secularism  of  Fleet  Street  he  kept  it  in  his  breast,  turn- 
ing ever  and  again  to  harken  to  its  echoes  from  the 
Unseen  World. 

This  may  be  taken  as  a  little  parable  of  human 
life.  For  we  are  all  citizens  of  two  worlds,  whether 
we  acknowledge  it  publicly  or  not,  haunted  bemgs 
who  feel  ever  at  hand  the  presence  of  the  invisible. 
However  deeply  immersed  we  may  become  in  the 


42  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

things  of  the  moment,  there  is  that  in  us  which  stirs 
now  and  then  with  an  uneasy  consciousness  of  a  world 
beyond  this  world.  We  are  like  mariners  strayed  into 
the  busy  inland  cities  who  hear  above  the  clamor  of 
thoroughfares  the  sea's  murmurs  drifting  softly  over 
the  far  horizon  walls. 

What  is  this  Invisible  World?  Of  what  is  it 
com.posed?  How  may  we  know  it  better?  One  of 
the  central  thoughts  in  Newman's  sermon  is  that 
angels  and  other  celestial  beings  are  ever  about  us, 
moving  the  winds,  guiding  the  stars,  and  stirring  the 
sluggish  currents  of  life.  Escaping  our  physical  vision, 
they  are  always  at  work,  and  it  is  they  who  compose 
the  major  citizenship  of  the  Invisible.  Thus  felt 
Newman,  as  many  another  prophet  had  felt  before 
him. 

If  the  Invisible  World  were  to  be  thought  of  as 
merely  the  realms  of  the  living  dead  it  would  have 
slight  claim  on  us  who  wrestle  here  with  the  undeniable 
harsh  facts  of  the  earth. 

But  there  is  an  Invisible  World  about  us,  close 
at  hand,  as  indubitably  real  as  rocks  and  water,  and 
wise  are  we  to  discover  it  and  to  live  in  it.  We  need 
only  look  to  see  it,  we  need  only  reflect  upon  our 
comm_onest  experiences  to  discover  that  in  it  we 
constantly  live,  and  move,  and  have  oar  being. 

Recently,  in  our  Capital  City,  I  passed  through 
the  great  House  of  the  Temple,  one  of  the  noblest 
buildings  in  the  country.  On  either  side  of  the  atrium 
stands  a  row  of  gigantic  granite  pillars  hewn  from  the 
quarries  of  Vermont.  Gazing  up  their  fluted  sides  to 
where  they  buried  their  chapiters   in  the  twihghts 


THE  INVISIBLE  WORLD  4a 

above,  I  said  to  myself,  ^'Surely,  if  anything  is  real, 
and  tangible,  and  actual,  these  are.  We  human  beings 
will  pass  on  through  generation  after  generation  of  a 
life  that  is  half  a  dream,  but  these  will  stand,  sarcas- 
tic, immovable,  and  undeniable/' 

But  after  all,  had  I  reflected  more,  I  should  have 
understood  that  even  these  granite  monoliths  belong 
to  the  unseen  as  much  as  an  angel.  If  a  fragment 
had  been  broken  off  with  a  hammer,  carried  to  the 
physicist's  laboratory,  and  there  analyzed  and  thrown 
into  the  mold  of  his  scientific  theories,  strange  things 
would  have  transpired.  The  scientist  would  first  have 
broken  the  granite  into  its  constituent  parts,  the 
molecules.  The  molecule  in  turn  would  have  further 
divided  into  its  parts,  which  are  atoms.  The  atom, 
though  the  word  itself  means  that  which  can  not  be 
further  divided,  would  next  have  fallen  apart  into 
a  system  of  electrons,  billions  of  which  are  required 
for  one  atom  of  matter.  But  there  is  no  stopping 
even  there,  for  it  is  believed  that  the  electron  is  itself 
a  tiny  whirlpool  in  the  ether.  And  what  is  the  ether? 
It  is  a  "substance"  infinitely  fluid  yet  infinitely  solid, 
a  thing  that  flees  from  our  senses,  and  remains  as 
invisible  and  undiscoverable  as  any  spirit. 

It  was  this  series  of  facts  which  led  Ernest  Haeckel, 
the  very  high  priest  of  materialism,  to  admit  that 
matter  escapes  us  at  last,  vanishing  like  Shakespeare's 
baseless  fabric  of  a  dream,  that  what  it  is  in  itself 
eludes  us,  and  that  at  bottom  it  may,  for  all  we  know, 
be  spirit.  Ages  ago  Hindu  metaphysicians  said  that 
Reality  comes  up  out  of  the  Unseen,  tarries  awhile  on 
the  stage  of  the  Apparent,  and  vanishes  again  into  the 


44  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

Invisible  whence  it  came.  The  whole  material  uni- 
verse, as  a  matter  of  cold  fact,  is  but  a  brief  gesture 
of  the  Unapparent  Infinite  Reality,  a  dream  woven 
between  the  soul  and  God. 

Persons  are  Invisible 

As  for  the  soul  itself,  who  can  deny  its  invisibility? 
There  is  no  need  that  a  man  die  in  order  to  live  in  the 
Unseen.  I  have  stood  in  this  pulpit,  now,  a  hundred 
times  or  more;  some  of  you,  and  the  fact  speaks  elo- 
quently of  your  patience,  have  seen  me  here  that 
often.  But  have  you  really  seen  ME?  No,  you 
never  have;  nor  have  I  ever  seen  YOU,  either,  for  what 
we  see  is  not  the  man  but  the  man's  body.  'Tut  me 
in  prison,"  exclaimed  Socrates!  'They  can  if  they  can 
catch  me." 

"We  are  spirits  clad  in  veils; 

Man  by  man  was  never  seen; 
All  our  deep  ccmmunirg  fails 

To  remove  the  shadowy  screen." 

If  I  were  compelled  to  choose  between  the  reality 
of  the  soul  and  the  reality  of  the  body  I  should  un- 
hesitatingly choose  the  reality  of  the  soul.  How  do 
you  know  that  your  body  exists?  Because  certain 
intim^ations  come  to  your  consciousness  by  means  of 
your  apparatus  of  nerves.  But  how  do  you  know 
that  your  nerves  are  not  deceiving  you  as  your  eyes 
do  when  they  tell  you  that  the  earth  is  flat?  You 
can  not  know.  You  can  only  take  the  verdict  of 
your  senses  on  faith.  But  the  soul! — that  is  the  real 
YOU,  which  you  are  conscious  of  immediately,  and 


THE  INVISIBLE  WORLD  45 

not  through  the  mediation  of  your  senses.  You  are  a 
soul;  you  have  a  body.  And  nothing  is  more  cer- 
tainly real,  even  as  nothing  is  more  certainly  invisible, 
than  your  own  essential  being. 

Our  whole  human  world,  indeed,  rests  upon,  and 
carries  continued  reference  to,  the  Invisible.  At  my 
elbow  lies  a  book.  To  the  eye  it  is  a  body  of  m_atter, 
of  a  certain  shape,  with  white  spaces  of  paper,  on  which 
are  inscribed  curious  crooked  marks.  That  is,  the 
book  is  a  material  object.  But  what  can  such  an 
object  mean  to  us?  Almost  nothing.  The  book  rises 
into  meaning  only  v/hen  I  interpret  the  strange  black 
marks  with  reference  to  some  mind,  my  own,  or  the 
author's,  and  neither  of  these  minds  can  anybody  see. 
What  is  tme  of  a  book,  is  equally  true  of  a  picture,  or 
a  piece  of  music,  or  a  statue.  If  the  Unseen  dropped 
oat  of  our  daily  liv^es  it  would  be  as  if  the  alphabet 
dropped  out  of  our  language. 

Business,  the  most  mundane  of  pursuits,  perhaps, 
is  an  interaction  of  spirits;  so  is  government.  He  who 
walks  through  the  city  of  Washington,  that  home  of 
congressmen  and  Southeni  leisureliness,  will  see  the 
public  buildings,  and  the  Capitol;  he  may  sit  in  the 
galleries  of  the  two  houses.  But  all  this  is  not 
government.  For  government  is  an  interchange  of 
thoughts,  an  interaction  of  wills;  and  thought  and 
will,  and  the  persons  to  whom  they  belong,  are  as 
invisible  as  Cardinal  Newman's  angels.  Material 
objects  change  and  pass,  assume  their  forms,  then 
vanish  away;  like  clouds  they  shape  themselves 
and  go;  but  the  Unseen  upon  whose  bosom  matter 
rests  is  here  for  ever.    For  God,  as  Job  remarked  long 


46  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

ago,  has  hung  the  earth  upon  Nothing!  Out  of  that 
which  exists  not  for  the  eye,  He  hath  fashioned  the 
brown  earth  and  the  star-fretted  vault  above  it. 

What  a  stay  and  comfort  this  fact  is  in  these 
days  when  so  many  of  our  famihes  in  Canada  and  in 
Europe  have  seen  their  husbands  and  sons  disappear 
into  the  grave-trenches  of  the  battlefields!  These 
men  have  not  passed  into  nothingness;  in  other  worlds, 
and  they  may  be  worlds  close  by  us,  they  still  tread 
the  dim  and  perilous  way  of  life. 

When  Jesus  went  from  his  disciples'  vision  it  is 
said  that  "sl  cloud  received  him  out  of  their  sight." 
What  a  contrast  is  this  to  the  description  given  us  of 
Buddha's  death:  "He  hath  gone  into  that  utter 
passing  away,  from  which  there  is  nothing  to  return." 
Between  these  two  sentences  one  can  measure  the 
vast  distance  that  lies  between  Buddhism,  the  message 
of  despair,  and  Christianity,  the  Gospel  of  Hope. 
To  the  Buddhist,  death  means  extinction;  to  us  it 
means  that  the  visible  veil  has  been  dropped,  but  that 
the  soul,  always  invisible,  continues  to  live  on  as 
before. 

Homeliness  of  the  Unseen 

To  the  ancient  people  the  World  Beyond  was  a 
region  of  gloomy  shadows  or  of  monstrous  existences. 
Even  to  Isaiah  it  brought  no  hope,  except  of  a  vague 
unreal  existence  in  the  dusky  caverns  of  Sheol.  To 
the  Greeks  and  Romans  it  was  even  more  uninviting, 
Homer  telling  us  that  princes  would  rather  be  shep- 
herds on  the  earth  than  reign  in  Hades.  If  you  turn 
from  that  to  early   Christianity  you   find    the  air 


THE  INVISIBLE  WORLD  47 

different  and  a  new  light  in  heaven.  Glorious  did 
the  simple  followers  of  Jesus  see  the  home  of  the  soul 
beyond  the  pillars  of  the  tomb,  many  of  them  even 
sighing  to  be  released  from  the  bondage  of  the  flesh  in 
order  to  enter  the  sooner  into  the  eternal  summer-land. 
What  wrought  this  change?  It  was  that  in  the  interim 
Jesus  had  passed  into  the  Unseen.  He  is  there  now, 
with  his  humanity  with  him,  warm  and  living,  full  of 
human  interests. 

My  friends,  let  it  be  so  with  us.  The  Invisible 
World  is  no  strange  place,  no  vast  stretch  of  chill 
darkness  stretching  through  the  night.  We  live  now 
in  it,  tasting  its  reality,  knowing  its  laws,  and  what  it 
is  now  it  will  surely  continue  to  be.  Those  mothers 
who  have  gone  before,  whose  sweet  names  we  this  day 
com.memorate;  the  little  toddlers  who  saw  so  brief  a 
span  upon  the  earth;  those  dear  friends  that  we  have 
loved  long  since  and  lost  awhile;  all  these  are  there,  as 
human  as  ever,  unseen  but  real.  A  cloud  has  re- 
ceived them  out  of  our  sight,  but  still  they  live  and 
ever  shall.    How  mysterious  is  this  life  of  ours! 

"We  seem  to  come,  we  seem  to  go; 
But  whence  or  whither  who  can  know? 
Unemptiable,  unfillable, 
It's  all  in  that  one  syllable. 
God!     God  first!    God  last! 
God  Infinitesimally  vast." 

Even  now  we  live  imbedded  in  Him.  If  He  were  to 
withdraw  Himself  from  us  for  the  fraction  of  a  second 
we  should  all  fall  into  nothingness.  A  cloud  sur- 
rounds Him  for  our  physical  eye,  but  always  the  pure 
in  heart  can  see  Him. 


48  CHRISTIAN  MYSTICISM 

Once  upon  a  time  the  fishes  of  the  deep  sea  held  a 
convention  in  the  grotto  of  the  depths.  The  sword- 
fish  argued  that  there  was  no  such  thing  as  water, 
though  he  had  been  taught  it  in  his  infancy.  The 
whale  said  he  had  traveled  up  and  down  the  world 
but  had  never  seen  it.  A  school  of  modern  minnows 
declared  it  to  be  an  ancient  superstition.  An  octopus 
spoke  through  every  one  of  his  mouths  to  say  that  he 
had  stretched  out  his  tentacles  in  every  direction  but 
had  never  yet  discovered  the  ocean.  Meanwhile 
the  omnipresent  water  laughed  to  the  sun  at  the  fool- 
ishness of  its  children  in  their  grotto. 

What  need  is  there  to  interpret  the  parable?  If 
the  Eternal  and  Invisible  One  escapes  us  it  is  because 
He  is  so  close  to  us,  a  secret  too  near  to  be  found  out. 
In  Him  we  are  living  at  this  very  moment  as  the  fishes 
are  living  in  the  sea. 

"And  God  is  within  and  around  me, 

All  good  is  forever  mine; 
To  him  who  seeks  it  is  given; 

And  it  comes  by  a  law  divine." 


Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  01004  1913 


